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Content type: News & Analysis
Court Of Appeal Tells UK Government That Criminal Records Bureau Checks System Breaches Human Rights
Yesterday the Court of Appeal delivered its judgment in the case of R (on the application of T) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester & Others concerning the operation of the criminal records check system. The court was considering three cases that hinged on the same question: whether or not the blanket requirement on those applying for jobs involving contact with children and vulnerable adults (approximately four million people each year) to disclose all past convictions,…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International’s campaign for effective export controls of surveillance technology is still ongoing, but for one company, action can already be taken by HM Revenue & Customs to hold stop their unethical practices. Here is the story so far...
Privacy International has been investigating the trade in surveillance technology for almost two years as part of our Big Brother Incorporated project. Our research showed the capabilities of surveillance technology has grown hugely in the…
Content type: News & Analysis
A full analysis of the UK Information Commissioner's "Anonymisation code of practice: managing data protection risk" will take time and working knowledge of how the code is used in practice.
At the launch, the ICO signalled that while they believed the code was now up to scratch, they were open to additions and clarifications given that it is the first document of its kind in the world. We applaud them for this; the code is likely to be copied internationally, so it is particularly…
Content type: News & Analysis
Twelve years after the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was passed by the UK Parliament, permitting the interception of communications without a judicial warrant and allowing the police to self-authorise access to communications metadata, some parts of this dangerous law are finally being properly scrutinised. This isn't an intentional review, but rather a by-product of a joint parliamentary committee's interrogation of the draft Communications Data Bill, the Home Office's…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International is proud to announce our new project, Eyes Wide Open, which aims to pry open the Five Eyes arrangement and bring it under the rule of law. Read our Special Report "Eyes Wide Open" and learn more about the project below.
For almost 70 years, a secret post-war alliance of five English-speaking countries has been building a global surveillance infrastructure to “master the internet” and spy on the worlds communications. This arrangement binds together the US, UK, Canada,…
Content type: News & Analysis
Large institutions tend to focus internally, with minimal regard to the external environment. Open Databecoming institutionalised is not different, and as a leading edge country in opening data, the UK is making the predictable mistakes first:
The UK’s Department for Education (DfE) is currently considering opening data from the National Pupil Database. At a preparation event for this initiative, at which some data was released for use in an ‘appathon’, one participant believed he…
Content type: News & Analysis
We welcome the Informational Commissioner's intention to produce guidance for data controllers around the production of Open Data. Rigorous guidance is sorely needed in this area, with even large Government departments getting it dangerously wrong. Some data can be released safely in some circumstances; depending on the type and there has been sufficient consideration of the nuance of the situation. Adequate anonymisation is exceptionally difficult, and reidentification is possibly using…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today, travelling within many cities around the world comes at a cost: privacy.
Electronic ticketing systems are proliferating, but it’s not clear how much information they collect or what they do with it. Privacy International has written to 48 transport authorities and companies operating transport services across the world requesting this data.
The kinds of personal information held about users of London’s Oyster card (which is used to travel by tube, train and bus) include full…
Content type: News & Analysis
A year ago this week, the UK government published a report entitled 'Transparent Government, Not Transparent Citizens', authored by Dr Kieron O’Hara. It made fourteen recommendations, the most important of which seem not to have been implemented. Meanwhile, the government continues to release data on citizens, and is accelerating these disclosures with some ambitious new policies.
This inaction on privacy and open data is particularly worrying given the UK’s leading role in open data and the…
Content type: News & Analysis
As part of the government’s ambitious Open Data programme, the Cabinet Office announced last year that data from the National Pupil Database (NPD) will be made freely available and accessible to all. The NPD, previously only available to researchers on an academic licence, contains a record for every single state school pupil in the country, covering educational attainment from reception to sixth form, as well as characteristics such as attendance, ethnic background and free…
Content type: News & Analysis
The UK Minister for Education, Michael Gove, today stated in Parliament that he would be moving forward his plans to open up the National Pupil Database, and announced a government consultation on the initiative. The Minister promised that "all requests to access extracts of data would go through a robust approval process and successful organisations would be subject to strict terms and conditions covering their handling and use of the data, including having…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy Internationally has submitted two documents to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee reviewing the draft Communications Data Bill. The first submission is an implementation briefing based on our work for the Big Brother Incorporated project, establishing the capabilities and defects of existing surveillance technologies. The second submission focuses on the the majority of the Joint Committee's 21 questions about the social and ethical implications of increased communications…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the PI office, we have daily debates about which platforms to use for our organizational operations. As a privacy charity, we are naturally concerned about the integrity of our own information services and resources, but we frequently receive queries about the best technologies to use from a variety of other organizations, some with very complex threat models.
The sad fact is that we are all poorly served by the range of services currently available. We worry that there is a significant…
Content type: News & Analysis
Imagine a secret government list of suspicions and allegations, fuelled by unsubstantiated rumours provided by anonymous citizens with undisclosed intentions. The information contained in the list would not be measured against any legal burden of proof or supported by any credible evidence, but would – simply by its existence – become “fact”. Imagine, then, if the government could rely upon such “facts” to identify and implicate individuals for illegal behaviour. Such a system would be…
Content type: News & Analysis
Drones are back in the headlines, with the news that the Ministry of Defence plans to develop unmanned underwater vehicles for use in submarine warfare. Human rights groups have already raised concerns over the UK’s use of airborne military drones, which have played a key role in UK operations in Afghanistan since 2008. But drone technology is not limited to military uses: the deployment of ‘civilian’ drones, designed for use in home airspace, may be an emerging trend in UK policing.…
Content type: News & Analysis
The recent acquisition of Skype by Microsoft, coupled with a series of infrastructural changes, has resulted in a flurry of responses, concerns and analysis of exactly what kind of assistance Skype can provide to law enforcement agencies. Under this heightened scrutiny, Skype released a statement on their blog on 26th July, purporting to re-affirm their commitment to the privacy of their users.
Privacy International are delighted to read that Skype believes that…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International has compiled data on the privacy provisions in national constitutions around the world, including which countries have constitutional protections, whether they come from international agreements, what aspects of privacy are actually protected and when those protections were enacted. We are pleased to make this information available under a Creative Commons license for organizations, researchers, students and the community at large to use to support their work (…
Content type: News & Analysis
The first joint report from the Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC), released last Friday, highlighted the importance of careful licensing and independent scrutiny for the export of ‘controlled’ goods, to prevent sales that could ‘facilitate internal repression’ in authoritarian regimes abroad. And as we wrote yesterday, the Committees advised that 10 Downing Street should make good on assurances PI was given in March that the problem of unlicensed surveillance exports would be addressed…
Content type: News & Analysis
The 2012 report of the Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC), released last Friday, has raised serious concerns over the government’s approach to arms exports, highlighting the use of British exports to facilitate repression and prolong conflict in authoritarian regimes abroad.
In his oral evidence to the Committees, the Foreign Secretary William Hague, stressed that the government’s position on granting export licences for goods on the Export Control list has not changed:
The long-…
Content type: Report
This report was submitted to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Under the current version of the draft Communications Data Bill, records of every person or entity with whom any given individual has communicated electronically would be collected continuously and stored for one year. These records would include the time of the communication and the location from which it originated.
The Communications Data Bill raises a number of concerns with regards to the right to privacy under Article 8…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the first public admission of its kind, the Home Office's Peter Hill admitted this week that the British government routinely sweeps up the identities of thousands of people in a given area - with a single request to a mobile phone network.
The statement was made during the first hearing of the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill, at which Mr Hill (Head of Unit for Pursue Policy and Strategy Unit at the Home Office), Charles Farr (Director of the Office for Security and…
Content type: News & Analysis
This weekend, the Department for Education sponsored an "appathon", allowing attendees access to the National Pupil Database (which holds information like exam results, special education needs, truancy records and eligibility for free school meals on every child at every state school in the country) and inviting people to build "apps".
The database contains over 400 variables and the records of around 600,000 children. With so many variables, it is a relatively simple task to…
Content type: Report
This report was submitted to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Under the current version of the draft Communications Data Bill, records of every person or entity with whom any given individual has communicated electronically would be collected continuously and stored for one year. These records would include the time of the communication and the location from which it originated.
The Communications Data Bill raises a number of concerns with regards to the right to privacy under Article 8 of…
Content type: News & Analysis
Mass surveillance affects us all
The draft Communications Data Bill - known as the 'Snoopers' Charter' - will dramatically expand police surveillance powers if it is voted into law. Innocent citizens would have all their communications and online activity monitored, all of the time. The government would store information about who we're texting, what we're searching for on Google and who we're friends with on Facebook. Police and HM Revenue and Customs officers would be able to access this…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Home Office has been planning a grab for new communications surveillance powers since 2006; today, the Draft Communications Data Bill established in legislative language their ambitions.
Yes, as they will point out, it isn't their the full scope of their ambitions. In 2008, under Labour, they proposed the idea of a vast centralised database of the nation's communications data. In 2009 they abandoned the idea of a central database. Since then, a new government has been elected,…
Content type: Press release
The government today published a draft version of a bill that, if signed into law in its current form, would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile phone network providers in Britain to install 'black boxes' in order to collect and store information on everyone's internet and phone activity, and give the police the ability to self-authorise access to this information. However, the Home Office failed to explain whether or not companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter will be…
Content type: News & Analysis
On Thursday 19th April, Privacy International - in partnership with the LSE, the Foundation for Information Policy Research, Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch - hosted Scrambling for Safety 2012, a discussion of the Home Office's new plans for mass interception in the UK. Around 200 people turned up (despite the sporadic but torrential rain!), and the number of insightful, well-informed questions from the audience proved to us that the Home Office is not going to…
Content type: News & Analysis
It is an increasingly common tactic of governments to say very little about a proposed policy, wait for opponents to start speaking publicly about it and then seize gleefully upon any error, accusing their opponents of peddling 'myths'. This allows officials to spend more time talking about what the policy isn't, and less time explaining what the policy actually is.
One recent example of this has been the Home Office's approach to its policy for 'modernising' communications surveillance. …
Content type: News & Analysis
In September last year, David Cameron told the UN general assembly: "As people in north Africa and the Middle East stand up and give voice to their hopes for more open and democratic societies, we have an opportunity – and I would say a responsibility – to help them." The Arab Spring uprisings had provided a chink of light for those living under repressive regimes, and it was now up to western democracies to help them throw open the door to a bright new future.
Yet over the past six…
Content type: News & Analysis
What do we know?
Very little. The Communication Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) is going to be included the Queen's Speech next month and we still haven't had public confirmation of the details. What we do know is that there have been secret briefings to MPs designed to scare them into compliance, and secret briefings to industry that were originally designed to calm their fears (but in fact have only served to increase their outrage).
What was previously proposed?
In 2009 the Home…